The cold that burns Blair Renfro Mantle was his only grant to vanity - Skin of wores, torn from the back of an elderly male who dared Facing you in the previous spring. Thick, clear as old bone, soft as the fuzz under the wings of a puppy. "I bet it was himself who killed them," Sared said at Tispner's casern, among sodged goles. He twisted the snake's necks with those gorilla hands, ripped through his feathers one by one. Our powerful mystical warrior. The laughter was shared by all patrolmen. Even the Panunor, who rarely laughed at something that did not involve label, smiled behind his ceremonial masks. "It's hard to accept orders of a man from whom we laughed in the glass in hand," Will reflected, sitting on the furry back of his gravel, trembling under three layers of black wool. Gared should feel the same. The wind was coming from the north, where the mountains were lost in a fog sulfur. The tundra stretched in front of him as a dumped bone, spickened by the gray grass tufts that the worts used to build their nests - that delicate grass, slow growing, which even then served to erect entire structures. Mormont told us to find the pack, and we find, "Said said, spitting on the frozen ground. - They are dead. They will not come back to cause us problems. We have a hard riding ahead. I do not like this time. If it snows, we can take fifteen days to return - he lifted his face marked, the scars where the ears had been shining red under the hood. "Have you ever seen an ice storm, sir?" Blair seemed not to hear him. He studied the twilight that he was adorned in the west, where the golden sky of CES has long had disappeared behind the horizon. There was that look of who was learning something - not thinking, not remembering, but absorbing, as if the air itself transmitted knowledge. Will already rode with the warrior time enough to realize that it was better not to interrupt him when he had that expression. "Tell me again what you saw, Will. All the details. Do not leave anything out. Will off hunter before dressing the black. Well, actually out stealthy hunter - caught by skining a albino deer in the forests of Thed's own autocrat. The choice was simple: the wall or left hand. He had chosen the wall, and his fingers were still all in place, which already was more than SARED could say. No one moved by the tundra as silently as Will, and the black brothers did not take long to discover his talent. "The camp is two miles later, after that elevation," Will said, pointing with his chin. - next to a frozen stream. I got the closest I dared. They are eight worts, with males and females. I did not see puppies. They raised a shelter against the rock, using rigid grass and feathers. The snow has already covered him well, but I still managed to dislike it. I did not see fire, but the pit where the fire had been still dark as coal. No one moved. I watched for a long time. Never a wore was so quiet. - Did you see blood? "Well, no," Will admit. "But the worts have thick skin, feathers ... the blood could have frozen before I saw him. - Did you see weapons? They do not usually use weapons, but- "" No. Just your own bodies. Claws, nozzles. A male had a broken horn in his hand. He was at his side, as if he had dropped him. - Paid attention to positions? Will shrugged. "A pair of them are sitting next to the rock. Most are on the floor. As fallen. "Or sleeping," Blair suggested. "Fallen," Will insisted. There was a female in a tuff of grass, half hidden between the stalks. A sentry. I would make sure I could not see me. When I approached, I saw that she did not move either, "he trembled, involuntarily. His octopus eyes were open, sir. Glazed. "Are you hooked?" Blair asked, not taking his eyes off the horizon. "A little," murmured Will. - It's the wind. The warrior turned to Gared. The old patrolman was shrunken over his gravel, the breath forming small clouds of ice that fell on before completing a hand. "What do you think you might have killed those wores?" Blair asked with a casual calm, adjusting the skin cloak on his shoulders. "It was the cold," Sared said with a railroad. "I saw men freeze last winter, and the other before that, when I served under the command of the old bear. Everyone speaks of the storms and the wind that comes from the north howling like a hungry wore, but the real enemy is the cold. It is close in silence, more stealth than Will. At first trembles, teeth beat, dreams of warm wine and bonfires. He burns, ah, how burn. Nothing burns like the cold. But only for a while. Then it penetrates the body, begins to fill it, and no longer has the strength to fight it. It's easier to sit and sleep. They say they do not feel pain near the end. First, it is weak and sleepy, everything begins to fade, and then it is like sinking into a sea of warm milk. As a Pacific. "How much eloquence, Gared," Blair watched a smiling trace on his lips. "I never suspected you had it inside you." "I also had the cold inside me, sir," Sared pulled back the hood, offering Blair a long view of the matches where the ears had been. - Two ears, three fingers of the feet and the little gloss of the left hand. I was lucky. We found my brother frozen at his watchpack with a smile on his face. Blair shrugged. "You should wear hottest things, Gared. Or maybe ask a panunor to teach you those heating dances that they do before festivals. Gared threw the warrior a fierce look, and the scars around his ears became red of fury. "We'll see how hot you can stay when winter comes true," he pulled the hood up and arched his back on the silent and frowning. "If Gared says it was the cold ..." "Botated Will. "You did some watch in this last week, Will?" Blair interrupted. "Yes, sir," there never had a week when he did not do a dozen watchmen. Where did the man want to go? "And in what state has found the ground?" The grass? Moss? Will frowned, thinking. - damp. The snow melted a little during the day, and then froze again at night. Gray grass was flexible, non-crushing. Blair nodded, her blue-green eyes shining with a knowledge that seemed arising out of nowhere. - Exactly. They can not have frozen. If the grass is still flexible, the temperature did not fall enough to kill eight apparatus. Remember: These creatures survive at temperatures of ten negative degrees. Their bodies are covered by rigid feathers that retain the heat. They have boule blood, fast metabolism. The cold we have now would not kill them or if they were naked. "So what killed them, sir?" Will asked, the lower voice than he intended. Blair's smile disappeared. For a moment, he saw something on his face that was neither confidence nor arrangers - it was a silent hunger, the same expression that a scholar has before a lost text. "I do not know yet," he admitted. "But I'll find out. And when I find out, I'll learn from it. That's what I'm here for. He pulled the reins of his rod - a huge black animal, that he could only ride, for any other man would be thrown to the ground - and looked at the elevation where Will had said to be the camp. "Take us there, Will. I want to see these dead with my own eyes. And from that moment, there was nothing else to do. The order was given. And Blair Renfro, the mystical warrior who could multiply as the swarms he controlled, was not a man who would accept to be disobeyed. Will followed ahead, his little fluffy gravel choosing the way through the core vegetation. A slight snow had fallen the night before, and there were stones, roots and pits hidden beneath his crust - lurking the careless and recklessness. Behind him, Blair Renfro rode in silence, his left hand slightly open, his curved fingers as if they were already holding something invisible. And long ago, almost dragging, Sared murmured an ancient prayer for the gods that no one else loved - a prayer for the cold to really be the killer, not worse. Something that Blair Renfro could learn. --- continues ...